The literary character, illustrated by the history of men of genius, drawn from their own feelings and confessions

Preface

V

I published, in 1795, « an Essay on the Literary Character j" to my own habitual and inherent defects, were superadded those of rny youth ; the crude production was, however, not ill received, for the Edition disappeared; and the subject was found to be more interesting than the writer.

During the long interval which has elapsed since the first publication, the little volume was often recalled to my recollection, by several, and by. some who have since obtained celebrity ; they imagined that their attachment to literary pursuits had been strengthened even by so weak an effort. An extraordinary circumstance has concurred with these opin-

PREFACE.

ions ;— a copy which has accidentally fallen into my hands formerly belonged to the great poetical genius of our times ; and the singular fact that it was twice read by him in two subsequent years, at Athens, in 1810 and 181], instantly convinced me that the volume deserved my attention. I tell this fact assuredly, not from any little vanity which it may appear to betray, for the truth is, were I not as liberal and as candid in respect to my own productions, as I hope I am to others, I could not have been gratified by the present circumstance ; for the marginal notes of the noble writer convey no flattery — but amidst their pungency and sometimes their truth, the circumstance that a man of genius could, and did read, this slight effusion at two different periods of his life, was a sufficient authority, at least for an author, to return it once more to the anvil ; more knowledge, and more maturity of thought, I may hope, will now fill up the rude sketch of my youth ; its radical defects, those which are inherent in every

PREFACE. £

author, it were unwise for me to hope to remove by suspending the work to a more remote period.

It may be thought that men of genius only should write on men of genius ; as if it were necessary that the physician should be infected with the disease of his patient. He is only an observer, like Sydenham who confined himself to vigilant observation, and the continued experience of tracing the progress of actual cases (and in his department, but not in mine) in th<» operation of actual remedies. He beautifully says — " Whoever describes a violet exactly as to its colour, taste, smell, form, and other properties, will find the description agree in most particulars with all the violets in the universe."

Nor do I presume to be any thing more than the historian of genius ; whose humble office is only to tell the virtues and the infirmities of his heroes. It is the fashion of the present day to raise up daz-

A 2

6 PREFACE.

zling theories of genius ; to reason a priori ; to promulgate abstract paradoxes; to treat with levity the man of genius, because he is only a man of genius. I have sought for facts, and have often drawn results unsuspected by myself. I have looked into literary history for the literary character. I have always had in my mind an observation of Lord Bolingbroke — " Abstract, or general propositions, though never so true, appear obscure or doubtful to us very often till they are explained by examples ; when examples are pointed out to us, there is a kind of appeal, with which we are flattered, made to our senses, as well as to our understandings. The instruction comes then from our authority; we yield to fact when we resist speculation." This will be truth long after the encyclopedic geniuses of the present age, who write on all subjects, and with most spirit on those they know least about, shall have passed away ; and Time shall extricate Truth from the deadly embrace of Sophistry.

ON THE

LITERARY CHARACTER,

8fc. fyc.

Chapter I. On Literary Characters

Since the discovery of that art which multiplies at will the productions of the human intellect, and spreads them over the universe in the consequent formation of libraries, a class or order of men has arisen, who appear throughout Europe to have derived a generic title in that of literary characters ; a denomination which, however vague, defines the pursuits of the individual, and serves, at times, to separate him from other professions.

Formed by the same habits, and influenced by the same motives, notwithstanding the difference of talents and tempers, the opposition of times and places, they have always preserved among themselves the most striking family resemblance. The literary character, from the objects in which it concerns itself, is of a more independent and permanent nature than those which are perpetually modified by the change of manners, and are more distinctly national. Could we describe the medical, the commercial, or the legal character of other ages, this portrait of antiquity would be like a perished picture : the subject itself would have altered its position in the revolutions of society. It is not so with the literary character. The passion for study ; the delight in books ; the desire of solitude and celebrity ; the obstructions of life ; the nature of their habits and pursuits ; the triumphs and the disappointments of literary glory ; all these are as truly described by Cicero and the younger Pliny, as by Petrarch and Erasmus, and as they have been by Hume and Gibbon. The passion for collecting together the treasures of literature and the miracles of art, was as insatiable a thirst in Atticus as in the French Peiresc, and in our Cracherodes and Townleys. We trace the feelings of our literary contemporaries in all ages, and every people who have deserved to rank among polished nations. Such were those literary characters who have stamped the images of their minds on their works, and that other race, who preserve the circulation of this intellectual coinage ;

Gold of the Dead,

Which Time does still disperse, but not devour.

D'Avenant's Gondibert, c. v. s. 3$.

These literary characters now constitute an important body, diffused over enlightened Europe, connected by the secret links of congenial pursuits, and combining often insensibly to themselves in the same common labours. At London, at Paris, and even at Madrid, these men feel the same thirst, which is allayed at the same fountains ; the same authors are read, and the same opinions are formed.

Contemporains de tous les hommes, Et citoyens de tous les lieux.

De la Mothe.

Thus an invisible brotherhood is existing among us, and those who stand connected with it are not always sensible of this kindred alliance. Once the world was made uneasy by rumours of the existence of a society, founded by that extraordinary German Rosicrucius, designed for the search of truth and the reformation of the sciences. Its statutes were yet but partially promulgated ; but many a great principle in morals, many a result of science in the concentrated form of an axiom ; and every excellent work which suited the views of the author to preserve anonymous, were mysteriously traced to the president of the Rosicrucians, and not only the society became celebrated, but abused. Descartes, when in Germany, gave himself much trouble to track out the society, that he might consult the great searcher after Truth, but in vain ! It did not occur to the young reformer of science in this visionary pursuit, that every philosophical inquirer was a brother, and that the extraordinary and mysterious personage, was indeed himself! for a genius of the first order is always the founder of a society, and, wherever he may be, the brotherhood will delight to acknowledge their master.

These Literary Characters are partially described by Johnson, not without a melancholy colouring. " To talk in private, to think in solitude, to inquire or to answer inquiries, is the business of a scholar. He wanders about the world without pomp or terror, and is neither known nor valued, but by men like himself." But eminent Genius accomplishes a more ample design. He belongs to the world as much as to a nation ; even the great writer himself, at that moment, was not conscious that he was devoting his days to cast the minds of his own contemporaries, and of the next age, in the mighty mould of his own, for he w r as of that order of men whose individual genius often becomes that of a people. A prouder conception rose in the majestic mind of Milton, of " that lasting fame and perpetuity of praise, which God and good men have consented shall be the reward of those whose published labours advance the good of mankind."

Literature has, in all ages, encountered adversaries from causes sufficiently obvious; but other pursuits have been rarely liable to discover enemies among their own votaries. Yet many literary men openly, or insidiously, would lower the Literary Character, are eager to confuse the ranks in the republic of letters, wanting the virtue which knows to pay its tribute to Caesar ; while they maliciously confer the character of author on that " Ten Thousand," whose recent list is not so much a muster-roll of heroes, as a table of population.*

We may allow the political ceconomist to suppose that an author is the manufacturer of a

' See a recent biographical account of ten thousand authors.

certain ware for " a very paltry recompense," as their seer Adam Smith has calculated. It is useless to talk to people who have nothing but millions in their imagination, and whose choicest works of art are spinning jennies ; whose principle of " labour" would have all men alike die in harness ; or, in their carpentry of human nature, would convert them into wheels and screws, to work the perplexed movements of that ideal machinery called " capital" — these may reasonably doubt of " the utility" of this " unproductive" race. Their heated heads and temperate hearts may satisfy themselves that " that unprosperous race of men, called men of letters," in a system of political ceconomy, must necessarily occupy their present state in society, much as formerly when u a scholar and a beggar seem to have been terms very nearly synonimous."* But whenever the political ceconomists shall feel, — a calculation of time which who would dare to furnish them with? — that the happiness and prosperity of a people include something more permanent and more evident than " the wealth of a nation," they may form another notion of the literary character.

A more formidable class of ingenious men who derived their reputation and even their fortune in

* Wealth of Nations, v. i. p. 182.

ON LITERARY CHARACTERS. |g

life from their literary character, yet are cold and heartless to the interests of literature — men who have reached their summit and reject the ladder : for those who have - once placed themselves high, feel a sudden abhorrence of climbing. These have risen through the gradations of politics into office, and in that busy world view every thing in a cloud of passions and politics ; — they who once commanded us by their eloquence would now drive us by the single force of despotism ; like Adrian VI. who obtaining the Pontificate as the reward of his studies, yet possessed of the Tiara, persecuted students 5 he dreaded, say the Italians, lest his brothers might shake the Pontificate itself. It fares worse with authors when minds of this cast become the arbiters of the public opinion ; when the literary character is first systematically degraded and then sported with, as elephants are made to dance on hot iron ; or the bird plucked of its living feathers -is exhibited as a new sort of creature to invite the passengers ! whatever such critics may plead to mortify the vanity of authors, at least it requires as much to give effect to their own polished effrontery. Lower the high self-reverence, the lofty conception of Genius, and you deprive it of the consciousness of its powers with the delightfulnes.s

J 4 ON LITERARY CHARACTERS.

of its character ; in the blow you give the musical instrument, the invisible soul of its tone is for ever lost.

r

A lighter class reduce literature to a mere curious amusement ; a great work is likened to a skilful game of billiards, or a piece of music finely executed— and curious researches, to charade making and Chinese puzzles. An author with them is an idler who will not be idle, amusing, or fatiguing others, who are completely so. We have been told that a great genius should not therefore " ever allow himself to be sensible to his own celebrity, nor deem his pursuits of much consequence however important or successful." Catholic doctrine to mortify an author into a saint; Lent all the year, and self-flagellation every day ! This new principle, which no man in his senses would contend with, had been useful to BufTon and Gibbon, to Voltaire and Pope, — who assuredly were too " sensible to their celebrity, and deemed their pursuits of much consequence," particularly when " important and successful." But this point may be adjusted when we come to examine the importance of an author, and the privilege he may possess of a little anticipating the public, in his self-praise.

Such are the domestic treasons of the literary character against literature— " et tu, Brute I" — but a hero of literature falls not though struck at; he outlives his assassins — and might address them in that language of poetry and tenderness with which a Mexican king reproached his traitorous counsellors : " You were the feathers of my wings, and the eyelids of my eyes."

Every class of men in society have their peculiar sorrows and enjoyments, as they have their habits and their characteristics. In the history of men of genius, we may often open the secret story of their minds; they have, above othersi the privilege of communicating their own feelings, and it is their talent to interest us, whether with their pen they talk of themselves, or paint others.

In the history of men of genius let us not neglect those who have devoted themselves to the cultivation of the fine arts ; with them genius is alike insulated in their studies ; they pass through the same permanent discipline. The histories of literature and art have parallel epochs ; and certain artists resemble certain authors. — Hence Milton, Michael Angelo, and Handel* One principle unites the intellectual arts, for

16 OxN LITERARY CHARACTERS.

in one principle they originate, and thus it has happened that the same habits and feelings, and the same fortunes have accompanied men who have sometimes, unhappily, imagined that their pursuits were not analogous. In the " world of ear and eye," the poet, the painter, and the musician are kindled by the same inspiration. Thus all is Art and all are artists ! This approximation of men apparently of opposite pursuits is so natural, that when Gesner, in his inspiring letter on landscape-painting, recommends to the young painter a constant study of poetry and literature, the impatient artist is made to exclaim, " Must we combine with so many other studies those which belong to literary men? Must we read as well as paint ?" " It is useless to reply to this question," says Gesner, " for some important truths must be instinctively felt, perhaps the fundamental ones in the arts." A truly imaginative artist, whose enthusiasm was never absent when he meditated on the art he loved, Barry, thus vehemently broke forth — " Go home from the Academy, light up your lamps, arid exercise yourselves in the creative part of your art, with Homer, with Livy; and all the great characters, ancient and modern, for your companions and counsellors."

Every life of a man of genius, composed by himself, presents us with the experimental philosophy of the mind. By living with their brothers, and contemplating on .their masters, they will judge from consciousness less erroneously than from discussion ; and in forming comparative views and parallel situations, they will discover certain habits and feelings, and find these reflected in themselves.

Chapter II. Youth Of Genius

Genius, that creative part of art which individualises the artist, belonging to him and to no other, — is it an inherent faculty in the constitutional dispositions of the individual, or can it be formed by the patient acquisitions of art 1

Many sources of genius have indeed been laid open to us, but if these may sometimes call it forth, have they ever supplied its want ? Could Spenser have struck out a poet in Cowley, Richardson a painter in Reynolds, and Descartes a metaphysician in Mallebranche, had they not borne that vital germ of nature, which, when endowed with its force, is always developing itself to a particular character of genius ? The accidents related of these men have occurred to a thousand, who have run the same career ; but how does it happen, that the multitude remain a multitude, and the man of genius arrives alone at the goal ?

The equality of minds in their native state is as monstrous a paradox, or a term as equivocal in metaphysics, as the equality of men in the political state. Both come from the French school in evil times; and ought, therefore, as Job said, " to be eschewed." Nor can we trust to Johnson's definition of genius, " as a mind of general powers accidentally determined by some particular direction," as this rejects any native aptitude, while we must infer on this principle that the reasoning Locke, without an ear or an eye, could have been the musical and fairy Spenser.

The automatic theory of Reynolds stirs the puppet artist by the wires of pertinacious labour. But industry without genius is tethered ; it has stimulated many drudges in art, while it has left us without a Corregio or a Raphael.

Akenside in that fine poem which is itself a history of genius, in tracing its source, first sang,

From heaven my strains begin, from heaven descends The flame of genius to the human brtast.

20 YOUTH OF GENHJS.

but in the final revision of that poem he left many years after, the bard has vindicated the solitary and independent origin of genius by the mysterious epithet the chosen breast. The veteran poet was perhaps lessoned by the vicissitudes of his own poetical life, and those of some of his brothers.

But while genius remains still wrapt up in its mysterious bud, may we not trace its history in its votaries? Let us compare although we may not always decide. If nature in some of her great operations .has kept her last secrets, and even Newton, in the result of his reasonings, has religiously abstained from penetrating into her occult connections, is it nothing to be her historian, although we cannnot be her legislator ?

Can we trace in the faint lines of childhood, an unsteady outline of the man ? In the temperament of genius may we not reasonably look for certain indications, or prognostics announcing the permanent character ? Will not great sensibility be born with its susceptible organization ; the deep retired character cling to its musings ; and the unalterable being of intrepidity and fortitude, full of confidence, be commanding even in his sports, a daring leader among his equals ?

The virtuous and contemplative Boyle imagined that he had discovered in childhood that disposition of mind which indicated an instinctive ingenuousness ; an incident which he relates, evinced as he thought, that even then he preferred aggravating his fault, rather than consent to suppress any part of the truth, an effort which had been unnatural to his mind. His fanciful, yet striking illustration may open our inquiry. " This trivial passage" — the little story alluded to — " I have mentioned now, not that I think that in itself it deserves a relation, but because as the sun is seen best at his rising and his setting, so men's native dispositions are clearliest perceived whilst they are children, and when they are dying. These little sudden actions are the greatest discoverers of men's true humours." That the dispositions of genius in early life presage its future character, was long the feeling of antiquity. Isocrates, after much previous observation of those who attended his lectures, would advise one to engage in political studies, exhorted another to compose history, elected some to be poets, and some to adopt his own profession. He thought that nature had some concern in forming a man of genius ; and he tried to guess at her secret by detecting the first energetic inclination of the mind. This principle guided the Jesuits.

In the old romance of King Arthur, when a cowherd comes to the king to request he would make his son a knight — " It is a great thing thou askest," said Arthur, wiio inquired whether this entreaty proceeded from him or his son ? The old man's answer is remarkable — " Of my son, not of me ; for I have thirteen sons, and all these will fall to that labour I put them ; but this child will not labour for me, for any thing that I and my wife will do ; but always he will be shooting and casting darts, and glad for to see battles, and to behold knights, and always day and night he desireth of me to be made a knight." The king commanded the cowherd to fetch all his sons ; they were all shapen much like the poor man ; but Tor was not like none of them in shape and in countenance, for he was much more than any of them. And so Arthur knighted him." This simple tale is the history of genius — the cowherd's twelve sons were like himself, but the unhappy genius in the family who perplexed and plagued the cowherd and his wife and his twelve brothers, was the youth averse to labour, but active enough in performing knightly exercises ; and dreaming on chivalry amidst a herd of cows.

A man of genius is thus dropt among the people, and has first to encounter the difficulties of ordinary men deprived of that feeble ductility which adapts itself to the common destination. Parents are too often the victims of the decided propensity of a son to a Virgil or an Euclid ; and the first step into life of a man of genius is disobedience and grief. Lilly, our famous astrologer, has described the frequent situation of such a youth, like the cowherd's son who would be a knight. Lilly proposed to his father that he should try his fortune in the metropolis, where he expected that his learning and his talents would prove serviceable to him ; the father, quite incapable of discovering the latent genius of his son in his studious dispositions, very willingly consented to get rid of him, for, as Lilly proceeds, " I could not work, drive the plough, or endure any country labour ; my father oft would say I was good for nothing," — words which the fathers of so many men of genius have repeated.

In reading the memoirs of a man of genius we often reprobate the domestic persecutions of those who opposed his inclinations. No poet but is moved with indignation at the recollection of the Port Royal Society thrice burning the romance which Racine at length got by heart ; no geometrician but bitterly inveighs against the father of Pascal for not suffering him to study Euclid, which he at length understood without studying. The father of Petrarch in a babarous rage burnt the poetical library of his son amidst the shrieks, the groans, and the tears of the youth. Yet this neither converted Petrarch into a sober lawyer, nor deprived him of the Roman laurel. The uncle of Alfieri for more than twenty years suppressed the poetical character of this noble bard ; he was a poet without knowing to write a verse, and Nature, like a hard creditor, exacted with redoubled interest, all the genius which the uncle had so long kept from her. Such are the men whose inherent impulse no human opposition, and even no adverse education, can deter from being great men.

Let us, however, be just to the parents of a man of genius ; they have another association of ideas concerning him than we ; we see a great man, they a disobedient child; we track him through his glory, they are wearied by the sullen resistance of his character. The career of genius is rarely that of fortune or happiness ; and the father, who may himself be not insensible to glory, dreads lest his son be found among that obscure multitude, that populace of mean artists, who must expire at the barriers of medi* ocrity*

The contemplative race, even in their first steps towards nature, are receiving that secret instruction which no master can impart. The boy of genius flies to some favourite haunt to which his fancy has often given a name ; he populates his solitude; he takes all shapes in it, he finds all places in it; he converses silently with all about him — he is a hermit, a lover, a hero. The fragrance and blush of the morning; the still hush of the evening ; the mountain, the valley, and the stream ; all nature opening to him, he sits brooding over his first dim images, in that train of thought we call reverie, with a restlessness of delight, for he is only the being of sensation, and has not yet learnt to think ; then comes that tenderness of spirit, that first shade of thought, colouring every scene, and deepening every feeling ; this temperament has been often mistaken for melancholy. One, truly inspired, unfolds the secret story —

■ Indowed with all that nature can bestow* The child of fancy oft irji silence bends O'er the mixt treasures of his pregnant breast With conscious pride. From them he oft resolves To frame he knows not what excelling things,

And win he knows not what sublime reward Of praise and wonder" —

This delight in reverie has been finely described by Boyle : " When the intermission of my studies allowed me leisure for recreation," says Boyle, " I would very often steal away from all company, and spend four or five hours alone in the fields and think at random, making my delighted imagination the busy scene where some romance or other was daily acted." This circumstance alarmed his friends, who imagined that he was overcome with melancholy.*

* An unhappy young man who recently forfeited his life to the laws for forgery appears to have given promises of genius. — He had thrown himself for two years into the studious retirement of a foreign university. Before his execution he sketched an imperfect auto-biography, and the following passage is descriptive of young genius :

" About this time I became uncommonly reserved, withdrawing by degrees from the pastimes of my associates, and was frequently observed to retire to some solitary place alone. Ruined castles, bearing the vestiges of ancient broils, and the impairing hand of time, — cascades thundering through the echoing groves, — rocks and precipices, — the beautiful as well as the sublime traits of nature — formed a spacious field for contemplation many a happy hour. From these inspiring objects, contemplation would lead me to the great Author oi nature. Often have I dropped on my knees, and poured oul the ecstasies of my soul to the God who inspired thern."

It is remarkable that this love of repose and musing is retained throughout life. A man of fine genius is rarely enamoured of common amusements or of robust exercises ; and he is usually unadroit where dexterity of hand or eye, or trivial elegancies, are required. This characteristic of genius was discovered by Horace in that Ode which school-boys often versify.* Beattie has expressly told us of his Minstrel —

" The exploit of strength, dexterity, or speed To him nor vanity, nor joy could bring."

Allien said he could never be taught by a French dancing-master, whose Art made him at once shudder and laugh. If we reflect that as it is now practised it seems the art of giving affectation to a puppet, and that this puppet is a man we can enter into this mixed sensation of degradation and ridicule. Horace, by his own confession, was a very awkward rider; and the poetical rider could not always secure a seat on his mule ; Metastasio humorously complains of his gun ;the poetical sportsman could only frighten the hares and partridges ; the truth was, as an elder poet sings,

" Instead of hounds that make the wooded hills Talk in a hunded voices to the rills,

*Hor. Od. Lib, iv. 0.3,

I like the pleasiug cadence of a line Struck by the concert of the sacred Nine."

Browne's Brit. Past. B. ii. Song 4.

And we discover the true "humour" of the indolent contemplative race in their great representatives Virgil and Horace. When they accompanied Mecaenas into the country, while the minister amused himself at tennis, the two bards reposed on a vernal bank amidst the freshness of the shade. The younger Pliny, who was so perfect a literary character, was charmed by the Roman mode of hunting, or rather fowling by nets, which admitted him to sit a whole day with his tablets and stylus, that, says he, " should I return with empty nets my tablets may at least be full." Thomson was the hero of his own Castle of Indolence.